Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/241

 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 229 NOTES The Mongol or Tartar Dominion. Various waves of invasion by tribes inclusively known as Mongolian, and separately as Huns, Avars, Magyars, and Bulgarians flooded into Europe from the fifth to the tenth centuries A.D. Kindred Turkish peoples within the Mohammedan area produced the great ruler of the east, Mahmud of Ghazni, and the conquering Seljuk Turks in Western Asia, in the eleventh century. But the greatest of all the Mongolian movements was that of the Mongol or Tartar hordes in the thirteenth century. Their conquests did not cease with Genghis Khan's death. For a time one division played an important part in the Bagdad kaliphate ; another division established a supremacy over Russia which lasted till the latter part of the fifteenth century. It was in the far east, however, that their dominion had some constructive characteristics, whereas in the west it was only destructive. The great Mongol Khublai Khan, in the latter half of the thirteenth century, received the far east as his share of the empire, which reached from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific. We have a contemporary account of his empire from the great Venetian traveller, Marco Polo. He was a conqueror, though Japan repelled the Mongol attack in a great sea- fight ; but he was also distinguished for his encouragement of the arts of peace, of literature and learning, and of organised government. The Mongol rulers of China are known as the Guan dynasty. In 1365, seventy years after Khublai's death, the dynasty was over- thrown and replaced by the Chinese Ming dynasty. Burgundy. At different times 'Burgundy' meant different things. Looking at the map of Western Europe in the ninth century, the 'middle kingdom' of Lothar is in three portions, Lotharingia or Lorraine, Burgundy, and Italy. Burgundy is that portion with the river Rhone on its west. The northern part of this is divided into the duchy of Burgundy which went to France, and the county of Burgundy or Franche Comte which went to the German Empire. The southern part comprised Savoy, Dauphine, and Provence Dauphine was acquired by France at the end of the thirteenth century ; Provence, an independent principality, was acquired by Louis XI. The dukedom of Savoy plays a separate part, and is later on translated into the kingdom of Sardinia. Burgundy begins to be a power in the fourteenth century, when the French dukedom lapsed to the Crown, and was given by the French King John to his younger son Philip in 1462. Philip's marriage brought to him also